Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Vertically Sliced Stories

The phrase vertically sliced user stories (also known as vertical stories) were discussed in Chapter 6, “Working Software.” They are also critical to delivering value. As a reminder, what vertically sliced stories signify is the idea that your user stories should encompass a thin slice of functionality across multiple components. Stories written on a component basis should be avoided (for example, a separate GUI story and a separate database story—your customers don’t think in terms of components; they think in terms of goals and business value). With vertically sliced stories, the idea is to write user stories in such a way that the envisioned functionality encompasses the GUI, the database, and any intermediate layers ...